Willihammer

You know it when you're in it. If you have to ask yourself whether the player would immediately have to be placed on the DL, for example, you're in the scrap heap. Let's be clear about the health issues. Masterson: suffered oblique injury in fall 2013. Still suffered from in in ST 2014. This caused him to alter his mechanics, causing him to hurt the knee in his pushoff leg. Compensating for that, he hurt his shoulder. That's 3 things. Players with 3 injuries belong on the DL or out of baseball entirely, not on anyone's 25 man roster. Rasmus: Right wrist, Right oblique, Right hammy. Has played 150 games once in 6 years. Textbook case of a player earning the label "injury prone." Rios: 34 with declining production in 2014 - that was before he missed the final 22 games of 2014 with thumb injury.

Get out of the discard heap?

http://twinsdaily.com/organization-chart.html

I suspect these are all guys who won't be on board with a minor league deal like Kubel was, all but locking whoever signs them into giving them PT and probably suffering for it.

"Kennys Vargas was told he didn’t have to play this winter, but he wanted to." Good to hear.

According to this

According to Masterson, the knee nagged him since the 2nd start of the season. However his sinker velo on the first start was 90.6, right in line with the rest of the year. Perhaps he hurt knee compensating for a third (initial) injury like an ankle or back?

I disagree. How many times do upside deals deliver sub-replacement level production? They aren't no-risk propositions people make them out to be. I'd rather see a healthy Reynaldo Rodriguez in left field than a gimpy 34 year old Alex Rios.

Kubel is a year younger with as much upside. Perhaps the Twins should waste another 176 PAs on him?

Were Santana's and Vargas's developments harmed? What about Colabello and Parmelee, do they need more time in the minors? I agree that as a rule, its not smart to plan on prospects to fill out your starting roster. On the other hand, you have to look at prospects on a case by case basis. The Twins should know better than anyone that minor league success or failure isn't an absolute determinant of MLB success or failure, and some guys will be ready before their OPS reaches a certain threshold while plenty of guys are never going to be MLB players no matter how much they dominate the minors. All I'm saying is if Rosario shares whatever characteristics that players in the former camp have, then the Twins should take their foot off the brake and press the gas just like they did with Santana and Vargas because clearly those two benefited from early promotion (as did the team).

And hadn't done well there (.268/.311/.381) The fact remains, there was nothing in Santana's MiLB record to suggest he would come up and be the Twins best hitter, but he was. And as mentioned, Vargas was the 2nd best hitter (in a small sample) without even facing AAA pitching first. If Rosario is ready for MLB pitching now (and I have no idea if he is), then he should be taken off the A-AA-AAA Path of MiLB Mastery and promoted as the other two were.

The Tribe actually traded for Lee. Sabathia was a 1st round pick (20th). I dont' think there's much room to game the draft anymore. Maybe teams can extra value by playing around with slot values but the bulk of talent is taken in the first round. Yes there are jackpots in later rounds but, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think there are any Warren Buffets in the scouting world who consistently outperform their draft/slot position to a degree that's statistically significant. If you assume that the draft is efficient, then there are no teams who stand to gain more by trade because they have more home grown talent to start with (anymore) unless they are perennially drafting higher than other teams. And since we're talking about mid-market teams, you could assume the same about free agency (I'll assume it). Sure maybe Boras can earn a few extra mil for his clients than other (although that's debatable too I think), but for the most part players get dollars and years that seem fairly assigned from a WAR standpoint. And since everyone has a ballpark now there's a pretty narrow band of revenues separating the 20 or so mid-market teams. Between those teams the FA playing field is pretty level. The correlations above are just from 2014. Maybe it was the year of the trade. Maybe over the past 3 or 5 or 10 years the correlations would look different. On the other hand the financial landscape would have been different 10 years ago before a lot of teams had new parks and before there were draft bonus pools. As far as judging GMs, its probably not fair to judge based on the small handful of trades that are made in a year. But since the players involved in trades have at least been drafted, and many times are current major leaguers with resumes and scouting reports up the wazoo, you would assume that reduces the threshold of significance required to make a judgment, esp. compared to say a scout that's watching 15 years olds in Venezuela. What that threshold is I don't know, maybe you'd need three or 10 or 20 years (or more) worth of trades to make a meaningful judgment but by then the landscape will probably have changed again. But I'm inclined to think, with the rules we have today esp. in the draft, that the correlations above are going to remain somewhat steady and trade winners are going to be the teams who prevail most often amongst mid-market clubs.

Trade. I was going to blog about this actually. 2014 team leader's in WAR from players acquired by trade: CLE 30.1 OAK 26.5 DET 20.7 WAS 18.3 TOR 17.9 SDP 17.6 BAL 17.4 TBR 17.1 KCR 15.8 CHC 14.2 LAD 10.8 CHW 9.4 MIA 8.9 LAA 8.4 PIT 8.2 NYY 6.9 STL 6.6 SFG 5.6 MIL 5.1 BOS 4.6 TEX 4.4 COL 3.8 HOU 2.9 NYM 2.5 CIN 2.3 SEA 1.6 ATL 1.4 ARI -0.3 MIN -0.3 PHI -0.4 In 2014, team WAR from trade acquisitions had a .48 correlation to wins. Stronger than WAR from the draft (.35), WAR from free agents (.29), WAR from Amateur FA's (.15), or WAR from Waivers, which, interestingly, had a negative correlation to wins (-.29). In fact, WAR from trade acquisitions had a stronger correlation to Wins than (SO/9 (.32), Home runs allowed/9 (-.39), OBP, SLG, LOB, home runs, or strikeouts (either batting or pitching). The correlation of trade-acquired WAR to team wins was about the same as BB/9 (-.49) and OPS+ (.52). So yeah, I think successful teams are looking to trades for talent. Additionally, I'm coming around to thinking that there's probably no better way to judge a GM than by his +/- WAR on trades.

LOL, so, he did schedule the wedding before the end of the season after all? Does HIcks want to play baseball for a living?

This is gonna be awesome!!!

Maybe it snuck up on him? I've defended Hicks from the public venting from Gardy and Antony but he does seem to be a button pusher. Seriously, he couldn't have finished the season? Especially after missing out last winter (when he was asked to go)? edit: Never mind I misunderstood. Hicks did plan for it, he's only not playing because he was cut I guess. Have Ps & C's reported to camp yet?

How much BABIP regression will be offset if he can improve on that 23% K rate?

What was the source on Sano staying at 3B? People were talking about Sano to OF because Terry Ryan said it was a possibility.

Interesting, I didn't know that about Oliva. But, that was 50 years ago... Any outfielders from the post-strike era?

No no no Parker. Don't you know? Only lefthanders like the ball down in the zone - down and in, that is. Because, well, they're lefthanded, that's why.

Arcia's entering his 8th season of pro ball. He's seen a million fly balls. I think he is what he is. I'd be curious to hear examples of outfielders who improved noticeably with the glove as they aged into their mid-20s, because I can't think of any. And I think people are underestimating his trade value. Arcia finished the 2nd half on a tear. He has tantalizing power potential.

How about the DL? Players don't like to pipe up when they're injured, we know this. We see it every year across the league. Heck Masterson didn't hit the DL til July - 19 starts in. This notion that if a guy is going to drop cleanly off the depth chart before the team falls out of contention seems ungrounded in how these things actually play out. You seem to think the Twins are an exception but we know of at least three players - Colabello, Nolasco, and Peflrey who logged a bunch of playing time while they were hurt just last year. These guys are competitive, they want to play. Certainly a guy on a one year make good contract is going to want to play too.

Sidney Ponson's 7 ERA or Jason Marquis' 8.5 ERA aren't sputtering. These are clear cases that fit the bifucated outcome theory. My point was that not every case is so clear cut. Correia and Liriano are two who fall into that third outcome and in both cases were traded after the team had played itself out of contention. That's the risk nobody seems to be considering. If Justin Masterson's mechanics are out of whack because his knee is bothering him, and he's throwing 90 mph instead of 93, and getting knocked around kinda sorta to a 4.7 ERA or something, those are the kind of performances that amount to a slow bleed over the course of a season.

A risky assumption. Not everyone turns in a bifurcated outcome where they stink so badly that they can be cut quickly at minimal cost to the W-L record ("Minimal," if you ignore the ~6m price tag on FA wins), or, they bounceback totally a la Kazmir. A third possiblity, maybe the likeliest, is that they just kind of sputter along at mediocre-to-slightly below replacement level value for an extended time. Eg. Dan Haren, Time Linceum, and some of the other bounceback guys that were discussed last offseason.

The Mets are truly the cheapest organization in baseball.